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Black holes have seized people’s imaginations ever since Tom Bolton published observational proof of their existence in Nature Physical Science 240, 124–127 (11 December 1972)]; they have spawned science-fiction plots about time travel and secret passageways to other dimensions, and they have fascinated anyone who ponders what the heavens might hold; a black hole occurs when a gigantic star implodes to become extremely small and dense, resulting in an immensely powerful gravitational pull; “Things can go in, but they can’t go out,” Bolton explains; even light cannot escape from a black hole, making it invisible from the outside. He grew interested in a possible binary system involving a giant blue star called HDE226868 and something else that was emitting powerful X-ray signals. He thought this invisible X-ray source, dubbed Cygnus X-1 (because it was in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan), was likely a neutron star.

Source: http://magazine.utoronto.ca/feature/astrophysics-tom-bolton-black-holes-research/
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